It is quite Intimidating for a Wordpress Beginner who runs into any type of problem when running their Blog or a Website at the Start. One should realize that making mistakes is normal which happens to everyone, but correcting those mistakes is the most important part.

One of the factor that makes WordPress the most popular CMS is the Community of Members that are always willing to help at every level. There before listing the most common WordPress mistakes, always make a habit of sharing your doubt’s with the Community.

Much of that..!! This article lists every possible mistake that one should avoid.

15 Common WordPress Mistakes that every Beginner Should Avoid

Know the Difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

Knowing the difference between the two platforms is still a confusion among the WordPress Beginner’s which has its own pros and cons.

The simple Solution to avoid the confusion is that if you are looking to make your personal Blog with no Intention to make money you can opt for WordPress.com

However, if you want to make a mark with your Blog and earn from it, you have to go with the Self Hosted Platform WordPress.org which gives you the freedom to add your own Plugins, Customize elements and many more but you have to incur the cost of Domain, Hosting, Themes (if you go for Premium Themes) etc.

Installing Theme from a Bad Source

It’s common to hear from the WordPress Beginners that their Site got infected with unwanted Links and some elements not working.

One of the main reasons for the above outcome is downloading the theme from a bad Source.

In order to avoid that always download free themes only from the official WordPress Repository WordPres.org or if you are looking for a Premium theme, there are many theme providers such as elegant themes, ThemeIsle, Studio Press etc.

Know your Users using Analytics Platform

How would you grow your Site? Increase Traffic and Engagement? This is one of the main pain points that everyone come across.

Until and unless you do not know how your Visitors Interact with your Site, Where do they come from? Growing the site to the next level becomes difficult.

With the help of Google Analytics you can analyze your traffic and users and focus on building your site more easily.
You can refer our guide to WordPress Heatmap Plugins which can be Integrated to your WordPress Site that’ll help you growing your Site.

Install SEO Plugin

You might have definitely heard of SEO. Yes..!! Your website or a Blog needs to be both Indexed and visible on the Search Engine page for  generating the Traffic and growing your Site accordingly for  which you need to Install an SEO Plugin and Configure it properly.

You can refer our guide to 10 Best WordPress SEO Plugins that lists the Best SEO Plugins that can be Integrated to your Blog or a Website.

Use a Caching Plugin.

No matter how much effort you put into writing your Post. Your Visitors will ignore your Site if takes ages to load.

There are many ways of Optimizing your WordPress Site for Speed, one of which is Installing a proper Caching Plugin that’ll help to avoid the downtime of your website.

Every Beginner should go through the guide of Optimizing your WordPress Site for Speed that’ll guide you through different steps of Speeding up your website.

Use a Contact Form

Whether you are a Blogger or a Website owner, how will your Visitors / Customers contact you? It’s you duty that you provide any medium though which they can get their queries solved.

Not only that connecting with you audience is the key to building relationship and trust with them.

Therefore its necessary that you embed a Contact Form on your Contact page. You can use free Contact form Plugin such as Contact Form 7 for the Purpose.

Don’t Ignore the About us Page.

You might definitely want to share the story of your Blog and increase the credibility of your Online Property. Having an About us Page will help in convincing your audience to engage more.
Hence apart from the regular post that you write, About Page is a great place for Increasing Connection and Credibility.

Keep it Simple

Striving for Simplicity for your Blog is always the best for the attraction and retention of audience since it is the solid reason behind a great User Experience.

Always Strive for Simplicity for a Better User Experience
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Though there are many factors that can help you keeping your Site at its best, the most Important one’s are:

• Always avoid adding any flash elements to your Site.
• Don’t clutter your navigation.
• Use of Proper and less number of Widgets

Ignoring the Responsive Design

With most of the Users adapting to smaller screens, you’re losing most of your audience if you too do not adapt to the latest advancements that comes in Web Design.

Responsive Design not only has its benefits on the users but also the Search Engines which takes this as an important factor to Rank the Website.

You can easily solve this problem if you follow basic thing of choosing a Responsive Theme for your Blog.

Using the Best format of Permalinks

Permalinks are the Short part of the URL that comes at the end of the Domain name. These links indicate to a specific Blog post on your Blog.

The Default Permalink Structure i.e. (example.com/?p=123) is considered ugly because it does not specify a useful meaning to the users.

Not only that, Permalinks also plays an important role in the One Page SEO of the website. Most of the WordPress Beginners make a mistake of sticking to the Default Permalink Structure.

Therefore to talk about the Optimal Structure of the Permalink, Always choose the Structure that specifies the meaning of your Blog Post through the URL.

Ignoring the Recent Updates

Everyone tries to do their work in the best possible manner. You try to provide the best content to your users and there are Hackers who try their Best to make an entry into your Website.

Hence, you’re giving a way to your website if you do not update WordPress, Plugins and Themes etc.

Developers constantly provide Updates to their plugins, themes, WordPress keeping in mind the latest vulnerability and it’s you’re duty of updating and keeping you’re Site Secure.

Always use a Backup Plugin

You are never sure about anything. In case your website comes under the attack of Hackers you have no way of Restoring your Blog / Website (apart from the Backup Services you have used or if your Hosting Provider has kept a Backup).

Therefore to avoid the uncertainty, try to schedule and keep a Backup of the website on a regular basis so that if anything bad turns out you can easily restore your website.

There are many Backup Plugin’s that you can use such as UpdraftPlus, BackUpWordPress etc

Always Research

With technological advancements every day, it is advisable that you constantly follow the news and Popular Blogs on WordPress that provides you with the latest updates on anything that can be improved.

Avoid Unnecessary Plugins

One of the best feature of Using WordPress is the availability of Plugins for almost every feature that you wish to have on your Blog but that doesn’t mean that you Install Plugins for every small Job.

Large number of Plugins tends to clutter the website leading to its downtime. One way to overcome this problem is by installing only those Plugins that are necessary.

Use a Lead Generation Technique

If you are serious about making money, building an email list through a Proper Lead Generation Technique should be your Number one priority.

Building an email list gives you the ultimate power of updating your users with the latest updates which in turn will bring them to your Site.

One of the Best Plugins for this task is  Sumo which is a free plugin.

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